First off, having recently returned from a most encouraging showing of my books at Oak Knoll this past week, I must say thank you to many who have followed this blog and whose friendships I continue to make and cement in the “real” world. I was amazed how many mentioned reading this or the social media bits of DWP’s online presence and I feel I must apologize for this blog having turned more into a PR tool or travelogue. It was my intention from the beginning for this to be more about process and dialogue. So let’s begin again and I will attempt to stay more on track though I will still mention new work or events but direct you to other sources for more details. This will be a somewhat longer post to get things rolling.

type hand-set on a curve

Dialogue – what is letterpress printing?

At these events and exhibits I have the pleasure of the company of fellow printers as well as a cultivated relationship with private and institutional collectors of my books. It is with interest I have noted a recurring theme of discussion which has been raging in the fine press world for over two decades but it seems the buying public is just starting to wonder: What is letterpress printing? Allow me a couple of paragraphs to cover the general process and history, neither exhaustive or fully concise:

By definition I suppose it is printing from a relief surface via letterpress. Letterpress is a term that has only come into existence really in the past 50 years and has morphed into both verb and noun use. Prior to this time it was the only widely used reproductive process as innovated by Gutenberg in the 15th century and it was merely “printing” and those who printed were “Printers” Today, those of us who continue the tradition, draw on this legacy for better or worse.

Gutenberg’s legacy is that of the matrix from which type is cast in a mould. Type is something you can pick up with your fingers and compose into words, form sentences, paragraphs and pages with. It is the famous “26 soldiers of lead” which conquers ignorance and tyrants. Type remained in this form until the late 19th century when machine composition became a possibility with the technology and resources made available by the industrial revolution and manifested by Monotype composition casting equipment and the Linotype and Intertype line casting innovations. Both of these new means of putting words into page form allowed for composition to be done via a keyboard and then cast into type metal from that action to form the composed page. With this innovation and increase in production some compromise was made in typography as compared to hand composition but refinements could be used to help negate and bridge the narrow gap. This technology remained in place essentially until the 1980’s with the advent of the ease of modern desktop publishing with the dark days of film composition enjoying a thankfully brief stay in the 60’s-70’s.

So why is the question being asked now – what is letterpress printing? What is new now and not part of the 500-year-old tradition of printing is the advent of polymer plate printing. Arguably this technology is what may have saved letterpress from near death and made it accessible and popular with small presses offering wedding invitations, business identities, packaging, ephemera and – books. Printing from plates is relatively easy and they are created predominantly on computers. No knowledge of the history or the art of printing is necessary nor are many of the skills ingrained in producing printing with metal types needed.

Nearly everyone with a computer can compose text, add illustration and even make a book. True also that anyone given a box of paint and a brush can paint a picture. The quality of the product created is the sum of the individual’s understanding of the process, their artistic abilities, level of craftsmanship and, I would add, their understanding of the history of their craft and those who shaped it. There are countless programs now in higher education across the US, the UK and beyond teaching letterpress and book arts courses in degree programs and, thankfully, almost all of them start teaching students the basics of hand typography – assembling type you can pick up from cases and composing the project as has been done since Gutenberg. The polymer machine sits in the corner biding it’s time and offering sweet promise of relative ease and speedy efficiency to be utilized later.

I fully acknowledge that now, at this point in time, it is very difficult to assemble a letterpress shop. The machines, fonts of type and supporting industry revolving around letterpress ceased to exist in the 60’s for the most part. Twenty two years ago when I started printing book forms I received the bulk of my equipment for free or little money merely to make room in more progressive established print shops for more storage or that new all-in-one color laser/dye sub/inkjet thing that did 90% of what their customers wanted. What is left now of the equipment is often quite expensive to purchase and, while type still exists, it is not the sturdy foundry type of the days of old and still commands a premium prices as well. Printing from plates also has the potential of producing work of the highest quality indistinguishable from metal type except maybe for being “too perfect” – not a guarantee but full potential if used by a typographer and designer skilled in better than average desktop publishing software.

So there was this poem and… Well initially I thought to do an intaglio print to accompany this but I’ve been on the linoleum kick lately after the six color blocks for The Path so decided to try a couple new things. A color reduction print, always boggled my mind but why not? Maximum sheet size for my Vandercook proof press in close registration on a 10 x 20″ linoleum block? Why not? eight press runs – they’re short, ok…

A relief printing color reduction print is started with the lightest color and only removing the whites, the negative space around the overall image. Then progressively removing more of the linoleum to create the next layer of color. Taking into account the ink transparency and how how it interacts with the previous layer. Looking at it close, in visual reading range (about 5-6′) and from across the room as a compositional complement to what is going on with the text. Just things I think about… Different things happen with the trout at various distances, something your computer just can’t translate…

The nature of reduction printing precludes any future editions. The block is systematically destroyed in the creation of the finished print.

From the beginning I planned to add a bit of red/sienna in the fins to the image and so left those areas open with the white to hit with some water color at the very end. If those areas had remained to print the sienna at the end it would have to have been over the black and that would have meant a very opaque ink, probably two press runs of a silver and then the sienna over it (which would have been cool) but I wanted it to remain washed out and transparent. I also wanted the salvaged block of the last run to be used for an under print on the secondary edition. (see below)

In this case:

The text block and title

Light blue

Grey

Yellow green

Mid Green

Olive

Umber

Black

Here’s the progression in a pictorial form:

It begins

Color developes

More color

More

What’s left of the block

A little pop

The Mad Angler’s Manifesto

The specs

Composed on the Linotype in 24pt Lydian with Americana Display type in 144pt with an 8 line Americana piece of wood type for the drop cap. Printed on Somerset Book 175gsm cotton paper in an edition of 50. 18 5/8 x 26 inches (47 x 66 cm), signed and numbered by the author and artist.

The secondary edition is of the poem printed on some white domestic commercial stock with a rough finish I’ve had left over for years now and features the result of the final linoleum block state. What is the black in the previous edition is now a dab of raw sienna mixed with heavy plate oil to create an underprinted image of the trout with the poem. Edition of 36, 12 3/4 x 26 inches (32 x 66 cm), signed and lettered by the author and artist.

Secondary edition. The Mad Angler’s Manifesto

That’s a really fat 21″ brooky/brown and this is how I typically see trout this size – swimming away from me…. Mike is coming by tomorrow morning to sign and number them with me, not enough time to get out on the water though.

Better pictures and available to purchase on my website next week when I return from the Kerrytown Bookfest in Ann Arbor this weekend. Come see me Sunday if you happen to be in the area. I’ll have books, prints, ephemera and will be demonstrating intaglio printmaking once again. If your kid is cute enough (and well behaved) they get a free signed print.

I’ve know Michael Delp for many years now and have admired his writing so when I became aware of his new series of Mad Angler poems I knew I had to finally get a project together with him. I know I’ve been doing a fair amount of trout related themes here in the shop latey – bare with me, I know it is an affliction of some sort – I’ve some Oscar Wilde in the works as well to please the non afflicted lovers of fine books and print.

The Mad Angler’s Manifesto is a longish poem, far to many words to hand set from the case as I would quickly run out of sorts (individual pieces of type) in a large size that usually is only used for headlines or titles. So for the past week I had been experimenting with something new on my Linotype and attempted to cast 24pt faces on an advertising mold. I’m happy to say that after some initial fiddling it has been a great success. As the Linotype is only able to cast 30 pica lines (5 inches) many of the lines of the poem had to be pieced together from multiple slugs into 50 pica lines – further complicated by only having 2 matrices for the letter “h”.

Then the galley of slugs is brought over to the press room and proofed on the Vandercook.

After a couple corrections and the addition of leading, a title and a few other refinements another proof is made.

Next up is to finish the large linocut I’m working on to accompany the text. So far the specs are: 24pt Lydian with 144pt Americana title on a 18.5 x 26 inch sheet. More to come soon as I hope to have it done for this years Kerrytown Bookfest in Ann Arbor.

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The Changeling’s Exile

Glenn’s remark

Some books produced at Deep Wood Press. The John Barth book “Browsing” was printed here at DWP for The Literary House Press (Washington College, MD) by James Dissette, my sometimes partner in crime in printing for Chester River Press.

Title page from Heart of Darkness

There Be Monsters.

deluxe binding of The Intruder

Glenn’s intaglio plate

1,000 Artist’s Books

The Intruder

A printed sheet next to the type form

Pile of Intruders

Killing the Bear by Judith Minty, deluxe edition binding & slipcase

Along with Youth

The 6th etching for the book, “Entitled”

Title page for the book There Be Monsters

Don Etherington binding of The Intruder

Opening spread for Minisens

Don Etherington binding of The Intruder

Killing the Bear

Opening spread for There be Monsters

the linoleum blocks for “The Path” center spread

Page spread from The Frogs Who Wished A King by Aesop, versified by Clara Dotty Bates.

Bower by Terrance Hayes

CD packaging

The Path

Presentation binding for The Chesapeake Voyages of Captain John Smith

Page spread from The Frogs Who Wished A King by Aesop, versified by Clara Dotty Bates.

Title page from Killing the Bear by Judith Minty

The Trout in Winter

Trout page spread

Heart of Darkness

type hand-set on a curve

Title Page

Saturnalia

Opening spread for the Frogs Who Wished A King by Aesop, intaglio engravings by Chad Pastotnik.

The Mad Angler’s Manifesto

a pile

spine label detail

Chained books at Chetham’s Library in Manchester, England where I was a speaker at a letterpress conference.